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New mission for a World War II relic worth honoring

By LAWRENCE DOWNES

New York Times News Service

Published: November 8, 2009

The rising sun over the Koolau Mountains cast a glow upon the ballistic missiles planted on the lawn of a submarine museum at the edge of Pearl Harbor, throwing long shadows across the water. They pointed at the bone-white memorial to the USS Arizona and, just beyond it, at the still-floating battleship Missouri, about to leave her pier.

It's not every year that you get to see a World War II battleship on the move. Particularly in the heart of Pearl Harbor, along what used to be Battleship Row, ground zero for the carnage of Dec. 7, 1941. The sight drew me and about 50 other people to the water's edge just after dawn on Oct. 14.

The Missouri, mothballed for years, was towed to Hawaii from Washington in 1998 to be a bookend to the USS Arizona Memorial, symbols of Japan's surprise attack and abject defeat. The Arizona was blown up and lies at the harbor bottom, a tomb for her crew. The Missouri sailed triumphant into Tokyo Bay in 1945; surrender papers were signed on her deck.

Rusting and leaky, the Missouri was being towed to dry dock for three months of repairs. As per the aphorism, turning her took a little while. Shortly after 7 a.m., she came into full broadside view, then swung around. From head-on, 16-inch guns bristling, she looked like every fat-bellied battle wagon in every newsreel you ever saw. In the foreground, she was dwarfed by the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan.

It would never be good to get misty-eyed about World War II, whose horrors will cast shadows to eternity. But it is possible to appreciate and even honor its relics, like the sea-changed Arizona, and makeshift monuments, like Mighty Mo.

Once it was the deadliest instrument of all-out war; now it is tamed and a gathering place for tourists, sailors and schoolchildren.

Her main duty now is to preserve the great moment that took place on her deck, so different from today, when a global war with a beginning and a middle finally came to an end.

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